Building a Library App Portfolio with Redis and Django

The Tutt Library at Colorado College is developing a portfolio of library applications for use by patrons and library staff. Developed under an iterative and incremental agile model, these single-use HTML5 applications target multiple devices while using Bootstrap and Django to deliver fast and responsive interfaces to underlying FRBR datastores running on Redis, an advanced NoSQL database server. Two types are delineated: applications for access and discovery, which are available to everyone; and productivity applications, which are primarily for library staff to administer and manage the FRBR-RDA records. The access portfolio includes Book Search, Article Search, Call Number, and Library Hours applications. The productivity side includes an Orders App and a MARC Batch application for ingesting MARC records as FRBR entities using RDA Core attributes. When a critical threshold is reached, the Tutt Library intends to replace its legacy ILS with this library application portfolio.